#neighborhood interactions

[trashcanplant]

Mob AU fun facts? Your characters (Specfially Grover) with Cherrys and Cloudys have such an interesting story

Oh my golly!!! Well, first of all, thank you. I’ll be using my neighborhood interactions format for this.

Marnie: Her vocal cords were entirely ripped out by Wally and have been preserved in his office. She is the replacement bartender and uses exclusively ASL to communicate. Marnie spends most of her time organizing the liquor and helping to manage funds. She was previously used as entertainment, but she kept trying to tell the police, so Wally had to fix her.

Grover: His Heart, the source of what makes Grover himself was removed as a test of loyalty to Wally, and its ashes are kept in his office. Grover is intimidation and torture with has the special task of feeding Vince’s crows bimonthly. He has one of the highest liquor tolerances of my characters in the Mob au. Grover has his own warehouse on the verge of the city, and is not allowed to go outside with express permission or an escort. He is often kept separated from the rest of the family and is left to his own devices.

Deirdre: Deirdre is not directly involved in the family, instead she is a member of the city council who has been blackmailed into exploiting her position to indirectly favor the family. She works most directly with Wally and Barnaby. It’s not been confirmed why she does this, though it’s been suspected that her hooves have been in someone else’s pockets.

Jonesy: Jonesy is now a vampire bat and his family runs a winery. He is being trained in diplomacy by his father, who has made a deal with the family. The deal between the Vampirebat family and the Darling family is simple, the winery will send 5 bottles of slightly aged wines (and a few made with blood) in exchange for free fertilizer for their vineyards and protection against attacks. Jonesy’s father plans to have him take over the company, and by extension, working with Wally as soon as possible. He’s only 11 years old.

Paulette: Paulette lost 3 of their 20 fingers due to outstanding debt to the Darling Family, and has since given up her study of astronomy in joining the family as a financial advisor. He mostly works alone and with Frank in the vaults and has a good head on their shoulders. Wally has preserved their fingers on a model of their hand in his office and plans to one day have the whole set.

Antoni: Antoni is a secondary intimidation and torturer along with Grover, whom he hates. He mostly deals in the finer things and acts like a true Italian gangster. His preferred weapon is the Tommy gun, and he’s arguably the best chef in the family. Antoni will go with Paulette to help negotiate with other gangs. While he lost nothing physically, he lost what was the most important thing to him. And he had to do it himself.

Minerva: Like Deirdre, Minerva is not directly involved in the family. She’s slightly older in this AU and lives alone in the city as a philanthropist. She owns an art gallery which acts as a holding space for any of her “charity cases”. Her nickname amongst the family is The Old Maid. Minerva uses a walking stick due to falling down a grand flight of stairs. She isn’t fully aware of what Wally does, but they will send a strong man or so to escort her to her parties and charity balls, so she won’t complain.

Doctor Topps: There’s a skull in Wally’s office, perfectly preserved.

I hope you had fun with that!!

[carolperkinsexgirlfriend]

Steddie Upside-Down AU Part 91

Part 1 Part 90

Eddie’s not thinking. Observations are floating into his mind too fast for him to categorize them, just snapshots of blinding confusion and color. Click – the explosion of pain when his knuckle impacts strangely against Hargrove’s jaw. Click – pain blooming against his ribs, sending him sprawling atop Hargrove’s chest. Click – he’s on the pavement, Perkins’ crawling atop him, pointy elbow jamming into his throat as she winds back to slap Hargrove hard enough in the face to send his head ricocheting into Eddie’s side. Click – Hargrove’s straddling his screaming ribs as he punches him, once, twice, ramming his head into the concrete hard enough that it bounces, exploding pain on both sides of his skull.

Eddie closes his eyes against the pain, holding his hands above his face in a futile effort to defend his sparking face against more damage.

Nothing else comes. Just for a second, Hagrove’s weight crushes his ribs further. The pressure compresses his lungs, all the air whooshing out in a quiet oomph. And then it’s gone.

Eddie curls into himself, hands around his ribs on instinct, eyes still closed until the screaming starts.

His eye feels swollen, sight fuzzy around the edges as he looks up at his savior.

It's not Perkins, or Mama Byers, or Barb, or even Steve.

Little Red stands over her brother, the nail bat in her hands pointed warningly toward his junk, dirty sneaker close enough that if she kicked forward, there’d never be any little Billy’s running around the world. Her hair’s got dirt in it, the fire in her eyes making her look almost feral.

Her voice is loud enough to ring throughout the neighborhood, but it’s going through his head like it’s underwater, like he’s Charlie Brown, it’s all just muffled, wah wah wah’s.

All he can hear is the ringing in his ears, high pitched and aching through his skull. Hargrove’s hands are raised, and he’s got a mocking sneer on his face, but his eyes tell a different story. They’re wide and afraid, and he’s scooting backward in the driveway, shirt riding up so his skin’s sliding across the pavement in a way that’s got to hurt.

Eddie levers himself to his feet. He wobbles around on sea legs for a second until a hand clamps onto his shoulder, steadying him. It’s Perkins. There’s a bruise already blooming on her cheek, and her hair’s a riot of knots. She slides her hands into his hair, probing around his head until she finds a spot that has him wincing and pulling back.

Her words reach him, muffled but unjumbled. “—need to get you to a hospital,” she says, leaning around him to look at the spot she’d just proved. “You’re bleeding like, a lot.”

Eddie leans into her, eyes closing for just a second. “Steve first,” he replies. The words rumble strangely through his chest.

He opens his eyes just in time to see Perkins eyes roll.

The voices around him unjumble slowly, until he can make out distinct words, unmuffled and blessedly decipherable.  

Clearly, his scrambled egg of a brain just needed to catch up with its new inflamed state.

“Everyone inside,” Mama Byers calls, voice strained. It’s only then that Eddie notices the lights turned on in the houses around them, and the way curtains twitch back like the nosy rich people can’t help themselves.

Hargrove’s still in the ground, but Max hefts the bat up anyway, pointing it toward him with a final edict of, “Go home.” She turns around, sauntering toward the Harrington’s front door in a way the Eddie’d die to be able to emulate. “I’ll be home soon.”

Lucas snorts as he runs to catch up to her, Mike and Dustin right behind him.

Eddie and Perkins don’t start forward until Barb and Will lead Steve out of the van. Barb has his head angled down, clearly trying to obscure the blindfold on his face. Will’s smiling up at him and nodding as if they’re holding a conversation no one else can hear. Eddie hopes it’s enough of a show to stop the nosy neighbors from calling the cops. Hop’s indisposed and everyone else will just get in the way.

Perkins has her arm around his waist, but each of his steps bring more surety, like his brain and his legs are reestablishing their link. Still, she doesn’t let go.

They’re all loitering in front of the front door, arguing about how to get inside. Perkins bullies her way past, digging the hide-a-key out of its place buried in the leaves of the bush planted in the pot beside the front door.

She slides it home, turns it in the lock like she’s used to it. Like she belongs here in a way that Eddie, and the rest of the party, and even Steve himself don’t.

She leads them inside. Eddie wriggles out from her grasp so he can flip the lights on.

Something giddy runs through his veins as he hears the heat click on. He turns, smiling brightly at the rest of the group, just as Dustin closes the door behind them.

There’s something manic, and woozy, and hopeful running through him as he looks at all these people gathered in Steve’s childhood home, willing to do anything to save him.

“Let’s get this party started,” Eddie calls, like they’re at some sort of high school rager instead of a grim group of people about to boil their friend alive if it’ll save his life.

When everyone looks at him, bug-eyed and wary, Eddie just laughs.

Part 92

Taglist: @deany-baby @estrellami-1 @altocumulustranslucidus @evillittleguy @carlprocastinator1000 @hallucinatedjosten @goodolefashionedloverboi @newtstabber @lunabyrd @cinnamon-mushroomabomination @manda-panda-monium @disrespectedgoatman @finntheehumaneater @ive-been-bamboozled @harringrieve @grimmfitzz @is-emily-real @dontstealmycake @angeldreamsoffanfic @a-couchpotato @5ammi90 @mac-attack19 @genderless-spoon @kas-eddie-munson @louismeds @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @pansexuality-activated @ellietheasexylibrarian @nebulainajar @mightbeasleep @neonfruitbowl @beth--b @silenzioperso @best-selling-show @v3lv3tf0x @bookworm0690 @paintsplatteredandimperfect @wonderland-girl143-blog @nerdsconquerall @sharingisntkaren @canmargesimpson @bananahoneycomb @rainwaterapothecary

[useless-catalanfacts]

Btw if you come on holidays and stay at an AirBnb instead of an actual registered hotel I hate you personally. Not "I hate the gentrification and touristic massification and the way we can't live in our homes and are forced to move away because of tourism" in an abstract way- No, not just that. I hate you.

[mapsontheweb]

Where NYC neighborhoods start and end, according to NYC residents.

via u/TheKCAccident

Fully interactive version (may be paywalled, though) available here. 

To create this map, The New York Times surveyed more than 37,000 city residents as well as all 59 community boards and all 51 city council members. Solid colors indicate areas of unanimity, while more mixed colors show significant disagreement on whether a block belongs to one neighborhood or another.

[fayeandknight]

Just had the cutest interaction while training Forte.

We were working on alternating between casual heeling/llw and fmp with him in harness around the block. We'd come full circle back to the driveway when I spotted a young kid on a bike coming up the road.

I put Forte in a down and planned to reward him as kid and dad passed by. But the kid saw Forte and stopped in front of us while repeatedly pointing out the doggy. (Kid was young, training wheels and dad's hand on the back of his seat.)

I could tell dad was getting uncomfortable because kid would not move on and was very fixated on Forte. So I looked at dad and explained that this dog is learning to be a service dog, which is a special dog who helps people. That this dog loves people but needs to be able to ignore them when he's working so he can focus on the handler. And if they had a few minutes, would they want to help me train him.

Dad relaxed and said yes. So I asked the kid if he could ride around real fast and call to the doggy. If the doggy stayed in his down I'd reward him with a tasty treat. Kid was pumped to do so. After a few minutes I thanked them both for helping me train my dog.

As the kid rode off I could hear him excitedly telling his dad "I helped train a service dog. They're really special dogs ". And dad agreed that he did and that he'd done a good job. Kid proceeded to say "I'm going to tell mom I helped train a service dog. Does she know they're special dogs?" To which dad said mom's going to be impressed because she knows those are special helper dogs and their training is really important.

It was such a wholesome interaction.

[bestworstcase]

i am asking you about tdt! remnant with particular interest in unhinged climate

it is so kind of you all to enable me (@meltedintoair @froginboillingpastawater @lemon-embalmer @blakistan)

don’t mind the unfinished continent i’m still (through gritted teeth) figuring the strandlines out… also if you’re wondering why solitas looks like that it’s because for narrative reasons i needed land at the north pole here’s what she looks like Put Together

ANYWAY you will notice that i’ve moved things around. anima and menagerie north by a solid 30’ and rotated sanus a little bit counter-clockwise for the sake of not having vale and vacuo on almost the same latitude. mostly this is for the sake of bringing the various climates of these places into more reasonable bounds for an earthlike-ish climate��except for vale, which has a maritime climate with cool summers and coldish winters at 6’N, because i fixated on the puzzle of “earthlike climate except for this One Region” like you would not believe.

but before we get to Refrigerated Vale we have to talk about

✨the moons✨

yes moons plural. because i looked at the broken moon and heard the siren call of THE TIDES. tdt!remnant has three moons: mar, the original, which is (like the canon moon) not tidally locked and has a massive dark crater on one side (THE MOUTH OF THE MOON–), and the much smaller anthe + ogmios, which formed through the accretion of debris flung away when the god of darkness exploded the moon and are smaller.

INCIDENTALLY the hegemonic calendar is a lunisolar calendar with months correlating to mar’s cycle and 8-day weeks (octs) correlating to ogmios’ much shorter cycle; anthe is culturally associated with the god of animals and khimerism—that’s the monotheistic worship of the god of animals practiced by many fauni—has an anthean lunar calendar that is wildly different. the vytali common calendar has 12 months divided into 8-day octs (with some gnarly intercalation going on to align the calendar with the solar year); the khimeric calendar has 17 months divided into 9-day enneads with an intercalary month and handful of three-day-long leaping festivals that rotate the calendar through the solar year in a fifteen year cycle. it would be remiss of me not to plug fantasy-calendar for all your batshit calendar making needs. i have a spreadsheet where i pin down all the math and then just set everything up in FC it has never let me down.

back of napkin math:

on average the tides are about +/- 3.9 m. neap tides where all three moons pull against each other, +/- 3.7 m. spring tides where they line up, +/- 4.2—these are the open ocean tidal range, coastal tides are highly variable but as a very rough estimate tidal ranges along the (habitable) coasts are probably somewhere between ~2 and ~16m, with significant amounts of uninhabitable coastline where the tidal range is much larger and building on the high tide coast means your settlement is several kilometers inland at low tide. riverside building is also quite difficult because tidal bores are. pretty extreme

port cities don’t have harbors the way we think of them. they have either sprawling, complicated systems of locks operated by konurgists (=professional practitioners of dust-based magic) or they have cliffside dry docks designed for lightweight vessels to ride in and out with the tides. vale’s wharf district is a maze of locks and caissons. argus and kuo kuana have dry harbors.

the other thing about multi-moon systems is you get more significant tidal flexing ergo more volcanism

so where earth experiences ~70 volcanic eruptions per year on average, remnant the triple moon tsunami tides planet gets to have a “statistically there is always a volcano erupting somewhere in the world” trivia question, and all the air quality problems and acid rain you get from that.

SO the first consideration with regard to tdt remnant’s earthlike climate is that the conditions which produce it are very different; i… am That kind of person who back of napkin crunched numbers for all of this (and spent like an hour fiddling to not tidally lock the planet to the star 😭) BUT the numbers don’t matter per se; the salient piece is that the sun is both cooler and a little further away than ours (<- yes this IS me looking into the camera like i’m on the office about the god of light) and the planet is kept habitable by tidal heating, meaning the friction produced by the moons stretching and squeezing the planet as they orbit around it.

the moons stress balling the planet is also what causes The Volcanoes, which release greenhouse gasses (keeping remnant warmer than it would otherwise be) but also semi-regularly you’ll get enough big eruptions in clusters to Deflect The Fucking Sun like it’s 1816 and global temperatures nosedive and climates all over go haywire for a year or two. i think this happens on average about once per century but the current historical period—the seventh era—begins with a quarter century called the forge years when the planet got HAMMERED by four really bad volcanic winters in quick succession. think “14th century black plague” levels of decimation, except it was worldwide famines + just an explosion of conflicts and wars over food sources + grimm, whose populations spike whenever there’s a major volcanic event because the planet’s mantle is a mixture of molten rock and atrum (=grimm juice).

(there are very few true herbivores in this world. there are a lot of animals that eat plants when it’s warm and meat when it’s cold. true herbivores tend to be either animals that store huge food caches or animals that can go a really, really long time without eating. plants mostly either develop super deep root systems, or pump out antifreeze proteins when the temperature drops, or develop cold-mediated serotiny, or a combination.)

BECAUSE OF ALL THAT, remnant’s oceans circulate in a completely different way than ours; tidal heating warms the bottom water at the poles, causing it to rise in strong east-to-west or west-to-east currents, forcing colder surface water downwards and flowing towards the equator. consequently remnant does not have permanent ice caps, although most of solitas is perpetually snowy above its strandline.

(the strandline is where the water is at high tide; as noted in many cases this is several kilometers inland from the low-tide coast. anima, solitas, alukah—that’s the unnamed dragon continent—and sanus are all a single contiguous landmass at low tide, with huge land bridges exposed. it is generally not a good idea to try to walk, with the exception of one specific island chain that is small enough to traverse safely on foot by walking island-to-island over a span of about three days, four if you’re being cautious.)

the upshot of all this is it’s relatively warmer and wetter at the poles and cooler and drier at the equator compared to earth, because the oceans are effectively upside-down, warmest at the bottom near the poles. (if you’re wondering why the tidal heating is distributed this way, the real-world exemplar i’m working from is europa. interesting reading!)

northern anima is a bit of a special case because even though it looks coastal, it isn’t; the sea in between it and solitas is very, very shallow and at low tides is just this for hundreds of kilometers:

so within that curve of the “dragon neck” shape, the whole strandline is functionally landlocked with respect to the warm rising polar currents and during the wintertime can actually get colder than the region of solitas where mantle is located.

and then there’s the impact of dust.

i’ve drifted quite a bit off the basic ‘fantasy elements’ approach taken with dust in canon because the concept of dust as a sort of crystallized energy appeals to me; so there are four basic kinds of dust (thermal, electromagnetic, kinetic, chemical) which can be further divided into subcategories by their specific actions. for example most ‘burn’ and ‘ice’ dusts belong to the thermal family and are distinguished by whether they radiate heat or absorb it. and i say ‘most’ because there are also things like organic-solar/“bog” dust, which forms in peat deposits and produces heat but is classed as an electromagnetic dusts because it’s solar-powered.

large deposits of dust modify the regional climate in often dramatic ways. and this is how we get Refrigerated Vale—the difference between vale and other equatorial regions isn’t as huge as it would be on earth, because remnant’s equatorial band is relatively cool and generally falls more into a ‘warm-to-hot mediterranean climate’ than tropical, but vale is very noticeably cold for its latitude. there are Two Reasons for this.

one is what i’m calling the tarthic koniohaline climate system (TKCS pronounced “ticks”). the tarth sea—that’s the body of water surrounded by alukah, solitas, and sanus—has a huge, several-hundred-kilometer-long seam of variegated dust running along the southern continental shelf, roughly following the curve of the alukite/sanite coastline but further out to sea. (“variegated” meaning it’s a mixture of different types all sort of entangled together.) sort of akin to a barrier reef, but dust.

the tarthic dust formation is mostly a mix of absorptive thermal dusts (colloquially: frost) and kinetic dusts (colloquially: tidal) which together act to cool and desalinate water upwelling against the continental shelf, which is then pushed southward in a clockwise direction along the sanite/alukite coast. that produces a very cool, wet climate along the coastline with frequent thunderstorms as cold fronts coming off the water collide with warmer air rising from the vivax sea to the south (which again: think mediterranean).

vale sits on the southern periphery of the TKCS and is cooled by prevailing winds originating from the tarthic coast. it isn’t as rainy year-round as the vitrine peninsula but it does get quite a lot of precipitation.

the other factor Refrigerating Vale is that there’s absorptive thermal dust in the mountains, too. eastern vale—the counties in the northeast part of the continent, which were contested during the great war and (unlike in canon) not wholly lost to the grimm—has a very pleasant climate, warm summers and mild rainy winters, sometimes snow in the north and at higher altitudes. prevailing winds are fairly dry and warm when they hit the mountains and then rake over peaks that are just covered in frost/ice dusts and act as a giant heat sink, so western vale gets these bitterly cold, super dry winds pouring down the mountains during the summer that collide with warm coastal winds and cause huge storms. in winter the prevailing winds are much weaker, though still freezing, and blow further out to sea so there are fewer storms and infrequent snow but the snow that does fall tends to stick until the spring.

and that’s why the maragda valley is nicknamed the world’s refrigerator and vale’s chief export is various frost/ice dusts :)

OTHER FUN DUST-RELATED THINGS.

the southern part of alukah is called the mordicchiate coast and it’s one of the only regions in the world with a true tropical climate because it’s very, very rich in an assortment of kinetic dusts (mostly different grades of grav) that essentially cook the region by Vibrating Constantly

the other tropical region is in equatorial anima, a big swath of jungle and humid-subtropical grassland in what’s called the palash basin. it’s hot because it’s the caldera of an ancient supervolcano and one of the most volcanically active regions in the world. there are a lot of grimm. there are so many grimm in the palash basin. there’s also a strip of super-fertile land running along the northern rim of the palash region so people keep trying to live there anyway.

along the southwestern coasts of solitas (where those free villages are in arrowfell) there are just enormous underground seams of radiant thermal dusts which heat up the land enough that it’s possible to farm there during the summers; it still snows year-round, but the soil isn’t frozen so all you need is tents with clear panels you can uncover/cover to control sunlight.

the nequam desert—that’s the one surrounding vacuo—is also laced with radiant thermal dusts that bake what would otherwise be a warm arid steppe into a parched, burning-hot desert that wants to kill you. there are hotspots all over the place where the dust veins are so close to the surface that you can cook on the ground; nomadic desert peoples notoriously almost never use cooking fires and were instrumental to vacuo’s success in the great war because radar systems were still very rudimentary and no fires at night meant vacuan guerrillas could maneuver undetected until they appeared seemingly out of fucking nowhere to maul enemy supply convoys.

the wildlife in the menagerian interior are unique on remnant because there is a preponderance of electromagnetic and chemical dust formations on the surface—mostly “shock” dusts, which discharge or generate electricity—and the animals living have been in an evolutionary arms race for millions of years with the result that if it can’t generate electrical shocks on its own, it’s gluing electric rocks to itself decorator-crab style or it’s got specialized structures in its mouth that it can pack dust into and discharge shocks from when it bites you. “how can the wildlife be more dangerous than the grimm,” the rest of the world asks. “we have scorpions whose stings deliver an electric shock at a high enough voltage to kill you before you hit the ground,” says menagerie. “and lightning snakes. and an electrical tortoise. and storm bears–”

there’s a volcano called mount halog on the northwestern dragon-head peninsula of alukah that began to erupt in 332 VE—twenty-five years ago—and has been more or less continuously oozing lava and half-formed grimm ever since.

acid rain (and snow) is a worldwide issue because of the extreme volcanism and in rainy climates settlements exist in a more or less constant state of repair and reconstruction; once a settlement is abandoned it will fall into ruin very, very fast unless the climate is extremely arid. the most volcanically active regions in the world are northern alukah, the palash basin, and the east coast of anima; volcanic smog blows north to kuchinashi from the palash basin fairly regularly.

black rain is a very dangerous weather phenomenon caused by ateric ash—the stuff grimm disintegrate into when they die—floating up into the atmosphere and then precipitating down as liquid atrum. which. coagulates into new grimm. the drippings from the wyvern in canon are the same in principle but much more severe; typically black rains will spawn lots of small grimm—think rat- or cat-sized—and may not leave puddles large enough to form something like a beowolf at all. but a swarm of rat-sized grimm is still no picnic, and black rain is difficult to forecast, so within the vytal league it’s standard practice for huntsmen and grimm extirpation forces to be kept at the ready whenever heavy precipitation is expected, just in case it’s tainted.

the oceans are also quite a bit more acidic than earth’s and tend to be very nutrient-rich near the poles and barren with pockets of life here and there in the equatorial regions—which, as discussed in the Whale Post, in combination with the relative cold creates selective pressure for VERY LARGE akin to the phenomenon of abyssal gigantism but extended higher into the middle pelagic zones. the greatest diversity and density of oceanic life is around the north pole.

(the MONSTER WHALES are called hafgufa, females live in pods around the north pole, males are solitary and range worldwide.)

also,

because atrum does not freeze above absolute zero, and because the planetary mantle is atrum intermixed with magma, every spreading rift in the ocean also constantly pumps out rivers of atrum, which 1. plays an important role in moving and mixing waters to sustain those pockets of nutrient-rich waters where marine life flourishes in the equatorial regions, and 2. slowly but steadily spawns diluvian grimm. the VAST majority of grimm in the world are sea monsters born from these underwater rivers :)

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

Interesting. Don’t necessarily think I’m autistic but I have more going on than just ADHD and I’m not sure what that is.

[age-of-moonknight]

Werewolf by Night: Red Band (Vol. 1/2024), #2.

Writer: Jason Loo; Penciler: Sergio Dàvila; Inkers: Jay Leisten and Aure Jimenez; Colorist: Alex Sinclair; Letterer: Cory Petit

[itsybitsypeterparker]

@marvelousmysteries continued from HERE

"Oh, really? That must be a nice memory, then." Peter offered a gentle smile to Steve, eyes softening. "I appreciate it, Mr.Rogers! You know, my aunt offers similarly good advice. I always know I can count on what she tells me."

[tennessoui]

I was the Tattoine health care anon, and I was thinking more that Obi-Wan gives Luke to Owen and then goes off on some sort of vaguely suicidal Robin Hood bender, which he only survives because a large portion of Tattoine is down with (1) crime (2) killing Hutts (3) lying about the first two. All of which obviously makes Obi-Wan even sadder. Just a depressed little man thinking he made dinner in a fugue, when really there's a neighborhood meal chart for feeding him.

(in reference to this ask!)

ah hello!! thanks so much for this addition 🤩 i do love a trainwreck of a kenobi being carefully and subtly cared for by those around him - it's one of my favorite elements of my lumberjack anakin au where obi-wan is grieving in small town alaska and the town sorta rallies around making sure this old man is kept fed and warm

though this has much more violence and crime which is always a plus in my mind!

[trashcanplant]

Even More Neighborhood Interactions!

We’re doing this again. No I won’t stop. There’s always more. And I was inspired cause I read all the fun facts on the Welcome Home fanwiki!

Marnie: She’s probably the third best cook in home. Her favorite dish is microwaved popcorn with caramel. Marnie gets all her sweaters from Poppy, and in turn, she plays gentle piano music for her. She gets really annoyed really fast when people misdate music on purpose and has punched Grover at least twice because of this. Her voice is similar to Nancy Sinatra’s. Her favorite modern song would be “Snowqueen of Texas” by The Mamas & The Papa’s. She has built a lot of the benches around Home and makes little shelters above them. Marnie constantly offers to build a house for Grover by his fence, but he is adamant that he doesn’t need or want it. Marnie is constantly researching music and is often traveling for conferences. She has invented an instrument of her own! Only she can play it. It’s a terrible mix between a harp and an oboe. Imagine as you should.

Grover: He exclusively eats beans, pumpkin flavored things, and sticks. If you gave him a chili cheese dog he would not refuse it, however. Grover makes little corn husk dolls and leaves them on the fences around Home during the fall. His love language is gift giving and quality time. There’s only so much time to spend, and especially making him a homemade gift. He has the filthiest mouth, swears constantly it’s insane. At this point it’s no wonder he’s never in any episodes. Grover gives Jonesy rides on his shoulders. He loves to sew and would probably be good at macrame and finger knitting if he spent enough time on it. His favorite method to scare birds is loudly singing at them. Just little folksy tunes he’s picked up. If you hear him playing banjo in the middle of the night, he’s really sad. Grover smokes little pieces of straw. He has a southern accent, maybe slightly Appalachian. He can pick up Deirdre very easily to combat her “when pigs fly” response. He will throw her again.

Deirdre: She has a room in the attic of her schoolhouse. Her classroom is on the lower floor, the little rooms for her students on the second floor, and she has a small living space on top. Deirdre is very finicky about the way things are organized, her preferred method being by date, and if not applicable, by size. She only swears when extremely scared, usually by Grover. Deirdre has several sisters, and is the oldest of them. She likes cornbread and hush puppies. She addresses her class as “little ones” She waters a lot of the flowers around the neighborhood. Her favorite song is “Sing Little Bird Sing” by The Left Banke. Marnie once upon a time taught her how to play the clarinet, but she quickly forgot and felt guilty about it. She carries a lot of the past on her back all the time. Deirdre stomps her hoof when she gets angry.

Jonesy: His favorite chess opening is the Trompowsky attack. He makes flower crowns with his female classmates after school sometimes. His voice is Toulouse from the Aristocats. Jonesy has a bit of a lisp. His fur is very curly and soft! He makes a squeak noise if you squish him. Jonesy’s family is actually quite affluent, it’s not everyday your parents have started their own Fruit Winery. He has a strong grip, but no weight to put behind it. So he often just gets stuck clinging upside to Howdy when he wants him to do something for him. Jonesy loves to run and play with everyone, even going as far as to wake Barnaby from a nap to play with him. When playing Chess against Home, he’ll lose sometimes but he’s gotten very close to winning. He’s fond of Paulette, but likes Howdy better.

Paulette: They’re definitely the only one who knows a second language, I think she learned French to better pronounce the names of his favorite astronomers and just kept it up and speaks French to herself sometimes. Paul definitely wears heels on the regular. They get tripped up over his words a lot, often resulting in tears. She wears his heart on their sleeve. Polly’s got autism and anxiety. They are trying to be better friends with Sally, but he keeps getting so messed up on words that Sally looses patience and leaves them alone. Paulette would take voice lessons with Marnie then sing “La Vie en Rose” to her and Marnie would be like “Oh, do you want to learn that song? I can find sheet music for you!” And then he starts crying. She, like Grover, has a bad habit of B&E, but only to invite people stargazing. He has gotten several shoes thrown at them. They are a bit younger than Howdy, but not by a whole lot. She loves pineapples, just fruity flavors in general. He has pockets full of glitter and will give it to people they like. She and Wally get along well, but he doesn’t not understand Paulette’s emotions. They sleep in a big nest of pillows and blankets and have glow in the dark stars on her ceiling, in the right constellations. He made Howdy help with it when they moved in.

[pastafossa]

how long did it take for your fanfiction to start getting some recognition? did you "advertise" it or "promote" it in any way?

i know that people say this doesn't matter, but i feel like even if you love writing the feeling that you're just talking to yourself gets pretty exhausting at some point. so i'm not talking about having thousands of readers but rather like. what's your advice to have readers at least?

- someone who hasn't even started writing their ideas yet...

LONG POST INCOMING.

First I want you (and everyone else reading who may be struggling with this) to know I'm absolutely with you and generally think 'it doesn't matter' is a horseshit answer. It's this weird thing we do in fanfic that we generally don't apply to other artforms that I've seen. If you're a painter, a playwriter, a novel writer, and you say, 'I want at least a few people to love my paintings, I want some people to come see my play, I want my novel to be published and do at least ok' we all support them, we nod, we agree, we talk about how they can do that successfully. It's considered normal to want some amount of success. But hold up fanfic instead and it becomes, 'how dare you want that praise, you're being egotistical, you should be writing only for yourself'. I'm not saying you can't do that - there are some who do - but it's definitely this bizarre switchup to say there's this single artform in which we can't want attention on our work and that there's something wrong with us if we do. That can be an absolute creativity killer depending on what kind of writer you are (hi, extrovert writer here who only gets writy writy juice from social interaction - aka comments and discussion. So I totally get it being exhausting just doing this on your own).

So let me say this categorically: you're allowed to want things. You're allowed to want kudos, comments, and hits. You're allowed to want messages and asks. You're allowed to want some readers you can talk with about your story.

You. Are. Allowed.

Ok, now that that's out of the way.

Edit: more below the cut cause I didn't realize the length of this on mobile

TRT definitely didn't get popular overnight. The first four chapters were sporadic, and then I took a hiatus due to life things for a couple years. During that time, it kept slowly ticking up bit by bit on AO3, with occasional comments. Iirc it was hovering somewhere around 700 kudos by the time I came back in Jan 2021 - and that's a awesome! It's big! But it's also a number that was gained over a few years, to put it in perspective. It absolutely took off after I came back though, and over the past 2 years both TRT's popularity and the stats of my one-shots in the fandom have grown. Part of that's just the time frame (TRT's been up about 6 years), but it's also due to a couple things that I think built up TRT's popularity.

Building a tumblr presence was huge. Ironically I didn't really intend to do it for advertising; I just wanted a place readers could ask questions or we could all freak out about Matt or I could post some drabbles or updates on the fic. But considering the fact that AO3 and tumblr are the top fic sites online, I wound up promoting my fics unintentionally just by being a friendly, happy tumblr user and fandom goer. All I did was follow the courtesy rules I knew - post stuff regularly, reblog, comment, make friends with other writers, just be friendly in your neighborhood because you love the lady with the gif flower shop on the corner or the wise old pizza maker who serves hot fandom takes all day long. I built familiarity with my writing and name by posting short fics, and by taking part in challenges and prompt lists and short requests for drabbles if I saw them, though that's something that's hard to do if you don't have time (I've got less time now, but I started this blog in the early pandemic so I had aaaaall the time in the world to write and was using it to stay sane). I tagged religiously because I LOVE tags, but that helped, too. Tumblr's search system is half broken but the half that works means people CAN find your writing even if they aren't following. Doing all this over here got me a huge boost over on AO3.

I will say that if you can have a fandom tiktok presence, there's a lot of fic reviewers, edits, and good stuff that can get your fic some readers (I've had some people do this on tiktok for TRT and it sent a surge over). I personally haven't done anything there yet, in part because while I'm on tiktok I try to keep my actual, real person accounts separate from my fic/fandom accounts and i haven't bothered to make a second account solely dedicated to the Pasta name yet.

Longfics on AO3 have the advantage in fic stats in the sense that every time you add a chapter, it gets bumped to the top of the front page and you get seen again. Eventually a lot of people will click out of curiosity. They may not, however, give you a lot of user subs or add to your other fic stats at first, whereas if you do a bunch of oneshots you're more likely to get user subs but less hits on each fic. This is a decision you'll have to make, and I know folks in both camps who built their followings using different methods on each. Either way, it helps if you're posting regularly, either in a long fic or one-shots. I call this the Stephen King method, who said he just writes a ton and throws it all at the wall, and eventually you get enough good despite the bad that you start building a following.

Learn learn learn. This is standard fic advice I always give, but it's still relevant. I think one of the reasons imo TRT has done so well is that I've spent a lot of time over the years learning how to write and edit - I read a ton of books (sometimes just to figure out HOW good authors structure their stories), I took a lot of English classes, I've taken some creative writing courses in my spare time. That two year hiatus was heavily spent doing a lot of research and practice around an original novel I want published one day. And I used ALL of that in TRT, just to see what it was like to put it all together. Be hungry for knowledge, be hungry to learn. The more you learn, the better your fic will be, and the more people that will click.

That learning also includes a looooong string of fanfics that started at a very novice level (hello 12 year old me), to fics that were ok and did moderately well but weren't anything huge. Hell, I had a tumblr account for my previous fandoms before I wandered over to Pastafossa, and while those fics did decently, I never had the huge reaction I've gotten here. But I used each and every one of those fics to learn and grow and adapt. Treat your own fics the same way. If it doesn't get hits, try to learn from it before moving on to the next idea a little wiser and a slightly better writer than before. There will always be people who start to follow you along the way.

A small one, but important: I swear to god, do not shit-talk yourself. Not in the summary, not in the tags, not in the A/Ns. I'm not talking, 'this is my first fic!' That's fine. I mean trashing your own work. Shit like, 'ha ha this sucks, it's terrible but oh well' will absolutely lower your stats, because people will believe you and will ditch your fic. On top of that, it's just mean to yourself, and as I said above, you want to be a good person in the fandom neighborhood. That means not breaking the windows of your own house.

People generally think of summaries as a side note, but a shitty summary can absolutely tank your stats. Treat it like the rest of your fic - this is the trailer before the movie, and it's a huge element of what gets people interested in the first place.

Lastly, like I said at the top, the biggest factor is time. There are people who post one fic and explode in popularity, absolutely. But far, far more little followings are built on the bones of time, of abandoned fics, of muttering and highlighting phrases in books in the middle of the night, of trying and trying and trying until we have at last have a breakthrough and then drag that breakthrough forward with us to the next fic. TRT is absolutely one part lightning in a bottle - the biggest success I've ever had anywhere with my writing, a confluence of fandom factors and world events that gave people (and me!) time to write and read. But it's also standing on the back of whole lot of fics I wrote that look like everyone else's: ones with no comments, low interaction, insults; ones where I had precisely zero idea of what I was doing, but wanted to try anyway. And the way I got through that, as a writer who needs interaction in order to create, was by building friendships in fandom so that even when a fic didn't do all that well, I still had friends I could talk to about the characters, the world, the fandom itself. I asked friends to look them over and give advice. I had friends being my cheerleaders. And if you're an extrovert like me, or just a writer who needs that to create, then those connections are vital as you build up a following.

That's a lot of what I've done. I know there are other ways to build a following, but this is generally what I've done, what I've learned to do, and it seems to have worked. Just remember that there are no bad fics - just learning opportunities. Learn something, and that fic's a success, and work as hard as you can to make those fandom connections to carry you through the process.

I absolutely hope to see your work around one day, so that I can be on of those followers!

[hyunjinz]

.

[whyeverr]

bit of an odd request but can anyone who’s already updated show / tell me on a scale of 1-10 just how borked tamo’s simson glasses are if you have them in your game, or don’t mind throwing them in to check, for science? 🥺

they’re rounded frames so I’m assuming it’s bad and that I can’t / won’t be updating anytime soon but would like to confirm before resigning myself to my fate

[fizzyizzysworld]

shes being a lookout but shes getting a little distracted

[polniaczek]

patron: why are you guys closed on the 19th? me: that's a holiday patron: what holiday? father's day? me: juneteenth patron: june tenth?? me: juneteenth patron: what's that? me: it commemorates the end of slavery patron: (scoffs) is that federal? is that a federal holiday? me: yes it is a federal holiday patron walking out: (angry murmuring) woke bullshit (murmuring) coworker and I simultaneously: 👀 wtfff 👀